


wildflower noose

by kbaycolt



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Drabble, Gen, Implied Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner - Freeform, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Alice "Daisy" Tonner Friendship, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, No beta we kayak like Tim, Season/Series 04, fluff but with spicy spicy angst on the side, sorta character study-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 07:14:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26469277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kbaycolt/pseuds/kbaycolt
Summary: Jon and Daisy go to a park. It's... okay.
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Alice "Daisy" Tonner
Comments: 4
Kudos: 60





	wildflower noose

They're at a park, of all places.

Jon liked them as a child. They were places he could wander off to and not be rebuked quite as harshly for; parks and playgrounds were acceptable, relatively, by his grandmother's standards. He found them boring, although sometimes there were interesting things to be found lodged in the mulch. Pennies, jewelry, four leaf clovers. He had, admittedly, been a bit of a hoarder.

It's funny, sometimes, how little things have changed.

Parks are still an escape, but they are a different variety now. Jon still hoards, but he hoards knowledge instead of items now. _People, too,_ he thinks privately. Sasha. Tim. Martin. Melanie. Even Basira.

Daisy.

He is still collecting. His things are more valuable than nickels, these days.

The sun is low on the horizon, casting the wooded area in slim golden rays. The trees block out most of the hazy, deep blue twilight that slowly bleeds overhead, but Jon can see little patches of navy where the leaves part. A cool breeze leaves him tucking himself further into his coat.

The park is almost empty. A few kids run around, giggling and shrieking, as their parents slouch on benches and sip caffeine with dead eyes.

Some of them have stories.

Jon bites his tongue. The pain briefly draws his thoughts away from the harried mother across the park, whose traumas scratch and whine and claw at his attention. She reeks faintly of the Vast.

Maybe sensing that he's beginning to drift off, Daisy tugs on the cuff of his trouser. He glances down at her.

She's sitting on the ground at his feet, cross-legged, methodically weaving grass into knots and discarding them. Her hair is tied back in a tail with a bright red band that belongs to Melanie. Basira used to help her with her hair, when it would fall down in disarray after rough hunts and tangle around her shoulders, always begging Basira to gently work a comb through them-

Jon bites his tongue again, and the intrusive knowledge scatters. _That's not mine,_ he snarls at himself.

"Enjoying yourself?" he asks.

Daisy frowns. She does that a lot, now. "No." She sighs. "But it's better than the Institute."

He agrees. Beholding does not. It itches for him to return to his temple, where he has left it in the care of an acolyte to a different god. It isn't right. It feels like sandpaper on a chalkboard every day that Jon allows Peter Lukas to haunt the halls of the Eye.

Beholding, if it _is_ sentient, is quite upset at Elias for abandoning his post like this. Jon takes no small amount of satisfaction from Knowing that he is the closest thing to the golden child currently.

"Did you really expect this to be fun?" Daisy asks, squinting at him.

"Well, not particularly. I just thought... I don't know. That I'd feel more nostalgia than I do."

Daisy rips up a fistful of grass and releases it to scatter in the wind.

The woman with the Vast statement now has a small child in her arms. She is comforting him as he sniffles, flooded with guilt over accidentally crushing a cicada on the sidewalk.

They're not here to have fun. Jon had asked her to accompany him under the guise of needing fresh air, but they both know the truth.

Jon watches Daisy attempt to braid a flower crown with trembling fingers, and wonders how those same fingers were possibly ever strong enough to grip a knife and press it against his throat. He wonders when Daisy's sharp stare became _comfort_ instead of _danger_.

Perhaps comfort is too strong a word for what she provides him. For what they provide each other.

Daisy is not safety. The scars on his skin prove that. But she is steady. She offers some measure of stability as his entire world spirals hopelessly out of control. And maybe that's fucked up, but hell, when has anything been normal or healthy in the past few years?

Right now, she is his leash, and he is hers.

The woman with the Vast statement is- shit. She's walking towards them.

"Daisy," Jon says, tapping her shoulder. "She, uh, she has a-a-"

"Alright," she says calmly, rising to her feet. "Stay put, I'll do the talking."

Jon closes his mouth and clasps his hands in his lap as the woman stops before them. _Laurel_ , Beholding unhelpfully informs him, _is her name_.

She has her son with her. Jon grits his teeth.

"Can we help you?" Daisy says brusquely.

"Hi," Laurel says. "So sorry to bother you, but my son Xander wanted to tell you something." She nudges the boy forward.

Xander's wide eyes flicker between Jon and Daisy nervously. "I like your scarf, miss," he says, voice high and youthful.

Daisy's scarf is a deep, rich scarlet, knitted by her grandfather for his only granddaughter. She got it for Christmas when she was nine. It went into storage when she was fifteen. Her mother unearthed it and insisted she take it with her to the police academy. After the Coffin, she retrieved it because it smelled like home and gave her a comforting reminder of-

Jon drags a fingernail down his wrist and tries to suppress his wince.

Daisy looks taken aback. "O-Oh. Yeah. Um... thank you."

Xander beams. "Also here!" He reaches into his pocket and scoops out a fistful of wildflowers, dropping them into Jon's hands. "I picked them because you looked sad and I wanted to cheer you up! No one should be sad at a park."

Jon gently accepts the flowers, holding them delicately as to not crush them, though many are already torn. "Thank you," he says, allowing himself the tiniest of smiles. "You've certainly succeeded."

Grinning, Xander then spins on his heel and runs back to the playground. Laurel gives them both an apologetic glance.

"Have a nice evening," she tells them genuinely, turning to leave.

"Wait," Daisy says. Laurel pauses. "I..." Swallowing hard, Daisy unwinds the scarf from around her neck, folding it into a neat square. She holds it out, eyes averted. "Here. For the kid."

Laurel makes a startled noise. "Oh, I couldn't possibly-"

"It's fine," Daisy says. Her hands aren't shaking. "I don't really need it anyways."

Taking the scarf with many expressions of gratitude and warmth, Laurel finally goes to follow her son.

Silence reigns for a long time, the only sound the droning of cicadas. Jon looks down at the wildflowers, which are beginning to wilt, and finds he is having trouble swallowing past the lump in his throat.

Daisy slowly lowers her hands to her sides.

"That was sweet of them," Jon says quietly.

Her voice is rough when she finally speaks. "I'm a bad person."

Jon begins to place the flowers into his coat pocket, one by one. "Yes," he says simply. The scar on his throat burns with phantom pain.

He will never forget how it felt to stab that shovel into the dirt; to bury the one avatar who was actually courteous to him. He will never forget the glee in Daisy's eyes, the glint of her sharpened teeth as she slammed him into that tree and threatened his life.

He will never forget the shape of the bullet wound in Mike's forehead.

"You're trying, though," he says. Daisy doesn't look at him. "A scarf doesn't equal a life taken. But maybe it counts."

"Counts towards what?"

The Beholding doesn't have an answer for him.

"I don't know."

Daisy considers that. She extends a calloused hand to him. "Come on, Sims. I'll order some takeout."

Jon takes her hand and rises to his feet. All the way back to the archives, she doesn't let go.


End file.
